Hear Me Out: Being Adopted Is Traumatic

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out… what? Oh my god, who told you? Adoption is a complicated thing. Raising a child who’s not related to you is challenging — and being that child, in many ways, is even harder. And it’s all too easy for adoption, particularly a white family adopting a black or brown child, to be framed as a heroic act. The truth, as adoptees will tell you, is a lot messier. Angela Tucker, a writer and transracial adoptee, joins us to argue that adoption is traumatic… and with the right reforms, it shouldn’t need to happen as often as it does. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie You can skip all the ads in Hear Me Out by joining Slate Plus. Sign up now at slate.com/hearmeoutplus for just $15 a month for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hear Me Out, I'm Celeste Headley.
0:04.3	You might have seen a story earlier this summer about the real-life family whose story inspired
0:08.9	the blind side.
0:10.4	Former NFL player Michael Orr has sued the twoies who he says have profited off the inspiring
0:16.3	story of their white family adopting a black teen out of foster care, without sharing
0:21.7	the profits with Michael or ever actually legally adopting him.
0:26.5	It's a complicated story, but Michael's lawsuit has still resonated with a lot of transracial
0:31.1	adoptees.
0:32.4	Being raised by people you aren't related to brings up a lot of questions about identity,
0:37.5	particularly when these relationships cross racial lines.
0:41.1	And transracial adoptees will tell you this discussion is not new.
0:45.0	An adoption is not a heroic act necessarily, but sometimes a traumatic one.
0:50.4	People want to think, birth parents are bad, adoptive parents are good, child goes to
0:55.0	a good place all as well, and it's just not how it works.
0:59.2	Angela Tucker, writer and adoptee joins us in just a moment, stay with us.
1:06.2	Welcome back to Hear Me Out, I'm Celeste Headley.
1:10.3	About 3% of American families have adopted a child, that's according to a 2022 Harris
1:16.5	poll.
1:17.5	And obviously 3% is a pretty small number.
1:20.6	But think of it this way, there are around 5 million adopted children in this country,
1:25.8	and even if you don't have an adopted child, or you don't know any adoptees, or you are
1:30.8	not adopted, it's a topic that comes up often for a lot of Americans, more than a third
	...

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